The Lost Years of Henry Thompson

1850 – 1870

In a previous post about my husband’s great uncle Henry Thompson, an immigrant and a veteran of the American Civil War, we learned that Henry’s life was full of travel and mystery – there are a lot of years in between census and other records where Henry is unaccounted for. To hopefully fill in some of the gaps and learn about Henry’s time in the military, I asked Gopher Records if they could retrieve Henry’s Civil War military file from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). They informed me that only some of Henry’s records were held at NARA. Because Henry died in 1936, some of his records were at the repository in St Louis as opposed to the archives in Washington DC. Gopher put in a request for those records and six months later they were released! I cannot recommend Gopher Records enough. I have used them several times and they are MUCH faster than NARA, less expensive, and you get the ENTIRE file – not just the pages that the Archives deem relevant. I had hoped that Henry’s file would shed some light on the years that had been unaccounted for and it definitely did.

There are many years of pension applications in the file from Henry’s first application in 1905, to the several appeals for increased benefits he filed in subsequent years. Henry’s file confirmed a lot of what I had already learned from previous records, but it also shed new light on some moments in his life. Henry enlisted in Company I of the 100th New York Regiment Infantry in September 1862 as a private and was discharged after the war ended in June 1865 as a Corporal at Richmond, Virginia. After his discharge from the military, the next record I had found for him was the 1890 Veteran’s Census in Marquette, Michigan where he reported he suffered from “rheumatism and ague since war”. Where was Henry for the 25 years between 1865 and 1890? For that matter, where was Henry between 1850 and his enlistment in the military in New York?

Pre-War 1850s-1862

Henry related over several interviews that he came to America when he was about a year old, that the family landed in New York, lived there for about 1 year, and then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I had previously found the family on the ship’s passenger list, but I had not known that they stayed in New York for that long. Henry stated in one interview that his father, also Henry Thompson, died in Milwaukee in 1854. I had guessed Henry Sr died in the mid to late 1850s because he was on the 1850 US Federal Census (USFC) in Milwaukee with his family, but he was missing from the home by 1860. Henry also wrote that his mother was Ann McCabe (something previously established by marriage records) and that she died “in the late [18]70’s” and is buried in Milwaukee. Again, Ann’s death was something I had guessed about due to her disappearance from records after the 1870 US Federal Census, but it was nice to have confirmation. I have still not located either Henry Sr or Ann in any death records, news accounts, or cemetery records, so I still do not have exact dates or locations for their deaths and burials.

Henry mentioned his sisters, Mary Ann Canfield and Eliza Jane Smith, and their residences in Waukesha and Milwaukee respectively. A new detail to me was that Henry mentioned that he had “a little brother named Willie who died as a baby”. Given that description, I can assume that Willie was a younger brother of Henry and that he most likely was born in the gap between Henry and Eliza. There is no record of Willie’s birth in Liverpool where the rest of the Thompson children were born, and Willie is not on the passenger list for the family when they came to New York in 1845. My best guess is that Willie was born between 1845 and 1847 in New York or Wisconsin, and that he died before the 1850 USFC, but I am unable to find a birth or death record for him in either place.

In stitching together the various narratives provided by Henry to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs over many years, it seems that the family broke apart after the death of his father. Henry stated that he never saw his older brother John again after about 1857. He had only heard about where John might have been over the years, including possible time in a Texas regiment, and John’s possible death in Chicago in about 1888. Henry had moved up to Buffalo, New York by about 1857 (he would have been about 13 years old!). Buffalo City Directories list Henry Thompson, driver, boarding at Walnut Street between William and Clinton Streets in the years 1859, 1860, and 1861. (City directories were published about a year after the data collected for them)

Henry then moved to 73 Mott Street in New York City by 1860. This part of Mott street at that time was an immigrant working class neighborhood and it is possible that Henry found work with a shoemaker (his father’s trade) or in any one of the bakeries or grocers who could employ a young man. A devastating fire happened on Mott Street in 1862 and 73 Mott Street was damaged. At that time 73 Mott Street was reported to be a four story brick tenement where about 20 families lived. Perhaps this is why Henry moved down to Washington DC – then Washington City – in 1862 before the start of the Civil War. I searched the 1860 USFC and New York City Directories for the years 1860 – 1862 and can not find Henry listed.

Post War 1865 – 1870s

Henry returned to Buffalo, NY to enlist and served until the end of the war in 1865 when he was discharged at Richmond, Virginia. After Henry left the military, he said he lived in Buffalo again and was employed as a hack driver. According to his enlistment records, he had also worked as a hack driver prior to enlisting. He listed his address as 83 Carroll Street which was a busy area near the Erie Canal. Buffalo was a terminus for many railroad lines and had a huge volume of canal traffic in the 1860s so it’s not surprising that passengers unloading from trains or boats would need a taxi driver to transport them to hotels or other areas of the city. I have no doubt Henry would have had plenty of work. I searched the Buffalo City Directory for the years 1865 – 1870 and found a Henry Thompson at 56 Carroll Street listed as a boarder with no occupation in 1866, Henry Thompson at 70 Carroll Street listed as a boarder and a driver in 1868, and Henry Thompson at 56 Carroll Street listed as a yard master for the Central Rail Road and home owner in 1869. There were no Henry Thompsons on Carroll Street listed in 1867 or 1870.

By 1869, Henry reported that he had moved on to Chicago, Illinois. He never stated any reason for his moving to a new place, but perhaps it was a little closer to home. I have searched for Henry on the 1870 USFC but have not been able to locate him. There is a Henry Thompson working as a railroad clerk in Peoria, but that is quite a distance from Chicago, so I can’t be sure. Henry’s sister Eliza married in Milwaukee in 1870 and she moved with her husband to Chicago. Family lore said that they lived there during the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. They were still living there when their first child, Eugene, was born in 1872. It’s possible they moved to be near Henry, or perhaps he moved to be near them.

Henry reported that he stayed in Chicago until about 1878 when he moved on again. I tried to locate him in the Chicago City Directory but the search was not conclusive. In 1871, the directory included some census information on the residents listed. There were 2 William R Smiths (Eliza’s husband) listed, both having only 1 male and 1 female family member in the home and born in England. There are several Henry Thompsons listed, none at a matching address for the Smith family, only 1 born in England, but many with no birth information at all. The next available directory was for 1875. Again, there were many Henry Thompsons listed, but no way to determine which, if any, was our Henry.

In the next chapter of his story, we will explore what Henry was doing while he was in Chicago in the 1870s. He had a few more surprises to reveal about his years after the war before he arrived at the veteran’s home in California in 1905.